- calendar_today August 26, 2025
New Trailer for Project Hail Mary Channels The Martian’s Spirit
In 2015, audiences first met Mark Watney on the red plains of Mars. The Martian, a surprisingly heartfelt take on Andy Weir’s bestselling first novel, was smart, funny, and just a little bit moving, winning praise from critics, audiences, and even a few awards. With Ridley Scott directing and Matt Damon in the title role, the film was a major success, making audiences hopeful that a new Weir adaptation would fare just as well. This time around, Weir’s latest bestseller, Project Hail Mary, is getting the big-screen treatment, and the star is none other than Ryan Gosling.
The first official trailer for Project Hail Mary, now in cinemas everywhere, has been released by Amazon MGM Studios. At a brisk two minutes, it hits all the right notes: science, desperation, and humor. From the claustrophobic opening moments to the hopeful final shot, it’s a no-holds-barred, big-budget, big-ideas space adventure. But with Gosling at the center of a cast including Thomasin McKenzie, Weir’s novel as source material, and Drew Goddard’s screen adaptation, this big-budget space opera also features another strong element of its own: the directing duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
Amazon MGM Studios first got involved with Project Hail Mary in late 2020, well before Weir’s novel was released the following year. The production company optioned the film rights to the novel, and Goddard was attached to write the screenplay shortly after. As many fans of The Martian may know, Goddard worked on adapting Weir’s 2014 novel for the screen. His smart and faithful adaptation earned Goddard an Academy Award nomination. Seeing this success, and both Goddard and Weir’s approval of the final product, bringing the pair back for Weir’s next novel was a smart move on Amazon MGM Studios’ part.
Lord and Miller as directors might seem an odd fit for a hard science fiction drama, but their comedic past in films like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie might be just what Project Hail Mary needs. The film’s cast and plot center on Ryan Gosling’s Ryland Grace, a mild-mannered middle school science teacher and former molecular biologist, who awakens from a coma aboard an empty spaceship with no memory of how he got there. The trailer cuts between Grace’s attempts to diagnose and remedy his situation, panicked as he realizes he doesn’t know where he is or how to get home, and flashbacks of him as a clean-shaven middle-aged man, teaching a class of wide-eyed children before he is approached by unnamed figures for a task that is unlike any other.
Namely, Grace is to travel to Mars to save the planet from extinction. The problem is that the Sun is dying, and multiple surrounding stars have also been found to be dimming, with one exception. The Sun has no natural companion in the sky; it stands alone. Scientists are baffled by the situation, and the situation is made even more dire by the fact that there’s no obvious rhyme or reason to it. This is all bad news for the solar system, but Grace, with his background in molecular biology, might be humanity’s last chance to find out why.
The offer is turned down with spectacular nonchalance by Grace, who in one line gives voice to the trailer’s central conflict: “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut.” Grace is not a natural choice for deep-space survival. As he points out, he “can’t even moonwalk!” At first, his unwillingness doesn’t seem to matter; after all, these people are only trying to recruit him. This all changes when a high-ranking, no-nonsense official, played by Sandra Hüller, confronts him. The woman is blunt in her delivery, and her pitch is simple: “If you don’t go, you die with the rest of us. If we do nothing, everything on this planet will go extinct.”
Grace is given one week to make up his mind, and it is no surprise when he decides to take on the task and save the world, Earth included, when he realizes the stakes of failure. He has the time to briefly train for the expedition but wastes little time: he is launched into space at high velocity before being knocked unconscious to be woken later in the journey. Cut to Grace’s awakening on the ship. Now floating in zero gravity, he quickly figures out that he is several light-years away from Earth, in a small spaceship, and alone. The other members of the crew are long-dead, information confirmed by the casting of Milana Vayntrub, who plays deceased Russian crew member Olesya Ilyukhina.
The loneliness doesn’t last long for Grace. He soon finds another spaceship and with it, a new form of life. Rocky, as Grace refers to the new species, is a single-celled life form that is completely alien to Earth’s biology. It also turns out to be a sapient species, capable of learning and communicating. Rocky is not the destructive species that Grace and the audience may expect, however. “He’s kinda growing on me,” Grace says in a video feed. “At least he’s not growing in me, you know?” The trailer allows for one small moment of interspecies communication, as Grace shows Rocky a thumbs-up.
